


134340

by horizsan



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, Choi Jongho-centric, Epistolary, I'm actually proud of this, If you only read one work by me, M/M, No Sexual Content, Post-Break Up, and i couldn't not write it, and it actually came out pretty nice, and wrote this in the span of a few hours yesterday, but not completely, content warnings in the beginning notes, every time i write angst it flops but i got this idea, he's just trying to move on and it's not working, hopefully in the near future, i promise i'll write happy jongsang at some point, i was reading the lyrics and i got so so inspired, inspired by the bts song 134340 (pluto), jongho is Big Sad, read this one please, yea it's sorta sad but i hope you'll give it a chance anyways :((, yeosang is sort of a Bad Person i'm sorry :((
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26159050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horizsan/pseuds/horizsan
Summary: Jongho continues to revolve around Yeosang, even though Yeosang's discovered an Eris to captivate his attention now and reduced Jongho to nothing more than a number and a distant memory.
Relationships: Choi Jongho/Kang Yeosang, Choi San/Kang Yeosang, Jung Wooyoung/Kang Yeosang, Kang Yeosang/Park Seonghwa, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	134340

**Author's Note:**

> hello! it's me again, but this time, i finally finished an ateez draft for a pairing that isn't seongjoong! i'm really excited to see how this will be received, although it is definitely more toward the sad side of the scale. i have ideas in my drafts for happier jongsang stuff, i swear!
> 
> WARNINGS: brief description of what could be perceived as an eating disorder used as a metaphor in the non-epistolary part of section one, bodily harm (not self-inflicted) used as a metaphor in the non-epistolary part of section two, mention of the Christian religion (again, used as a metaphor) in the epistolary part of section three, a few swear words here and there. if there's anything else i need to add here, let me know in the comments!
> 
> note: eris is a (now dwarf) planet that was discovered sometime around the same time that pluto lost its status as a planet. eris and pluto are very similar in structure, and have pretty much all the same characteristics, so not long after pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, eris was demoted as well.
> 
> without further ado, here you go! i hope you like this, and if you do, feel free to kudo/comment and feed me some serotonin!
> 
> \+ abby <3

**section one**

_If I could, I wanted to ask you_

_Why did you do that back then? Why did you kick me out?_

* * *

_Dear Yeosang,_

_Why? Why? Why? Why? I guess that’s the only question I have for you: Why? Why did you do it? Why did you let yourself become the center of my universe if you always knew you weren’t going to stay? I guess that’s the question I have for myself, too. Why did I let myself make you the center of my universe so fast, when I had that gut feeling you were going to burn me out like a dying star and move on to a new moon once you were done with me? Why did I do that to myself? Why did I let you do that to me? Why? Why? Why?_

_That’s all I can really ask. I don’t think I’ll ever get an answer, ‘cause I don’t even think you know an answer to give me. Even if you did know, you wouldn’t tell me anyway. Why am I even asking? See, there’s another “why”. I’ll drown in them at this rate._

~~_Love,_ ~~

_From,_

_Jongho_

+++

Jongho was never quite sure as to why he’d done it. Maybe he’d always intended to, maybe he’d wanted to from the very beginning, wanted to humor Jongho’s innocent childish wants until he got sick of it and then kick Jongho to the curb. Maybe it was a spur of the moment decision made while he was high on the invigorating gaze of that stupid moon boy (not really stupid, that’s a bit harsh, and Jongho isn’t really angry at him, but at the same time, he is). Maybe it was neither of those things; maybe it was something else entirely. Jongho never knew, and at the rate things were going, he wasn’t sure he ever would. There’s a lot of being unsure now, too much uncertainty, and if there’s one thing Jongho hates, it’s not being sure. Uncertainty has always been his worst enemy. He likes knowing things. There’s safety in knowledge. Without knowledge...that safety fades away.

He wants to ask Yeosang why. Better yet, he wants to ask, and then actually get an answer. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

It’s a shame Jongho’s always been too scared to truly ask. He writes letters he’ll never send and types out text messages he won’t send either to a number he already knows has his blocked, asking: _why, why, why, why, why?_ Maybe if he really asked, he’d get an answer, but he’ll never know. The odds are there, but too slim to take a chance on in Jongho’s worldview.

  
They’re slim (slimmer than the sorority girls on campus who have water for breakfast and oxygen for lunch, skipping out on dinner, and even _that’s_ too many calories). But they’re there, aren’t they? The odds are there. But Jongho was never the type to take slim chances. He took a slim chance once, and it panned out. Briefly. Only briefly. As brief as the bright light of a dying star exploding into a supernova that only lasts for a split second in the span of the universe’s eternal existence. But it was there. It existed, it happened, and maybe taking that slim chance once was the best thing Jongho ever did. Maybe it was the worst. He’s not sure which.

* * *

**section two**

_I have no name_

_Although I was your star_

* * *

Jongho used to be Yeosang’s star. That’s what Yeosang had always called him. He’d ruffle Jongho’s hair with one hand (the other clutching that beautiful purple skateboard, the exact color of a twilight sky), and press a kiss to Jongho’s temple, and whisper, “You’re so beautiful, my little star,” and Jongho had practically preened under the saccharine words. The first time Yeosang had called him that, Jongho had ducked his head in embarrassment, a scalding blush darkening his cheeks, one hand half-hidden by the sleeve of a sweater that was entirely too big (he’d stolen it from his older brother) coming up to hide his face. He’d retorted with something along the lines of, “No, you’re the star between the two of us,” and he clearly remembers even now the sound of Yeosang’s laugh, like champagne bubbling over the edges of a glass and spilling itself onto everything around it, soaking into the fabric of the love Jongho already held for him and intensifying it a thousand times over.

God, he’d loved that laugh. He hadn’t gotten to hear it very often, which only made it all the more lovely on the rare occasion that that beautiful sound did leave Yeosang’s lips; only made Jongho want to hold onto it and cherish it further. He wishes he’d held on tighter. Letting go of that laugh, though, was maybe less painful than holding on to it would have been.

Regardless of that, Jongho wishes he’d held on tighter. If he could have, he would have let every finger on his hands break, would have let his hand pop out of the socket that held it to his wrist, would have let his arm be sliced off just below the elbow, would have endured all the pain in the world just to hold onto the sound of that laugh. But the universe is cruel sometimes, and wouldn’t let him hold on to much of anything after Yeosang reduced him to someone without even a name to be called after he’d once been Yeosang’s star.

+++

_Dear Yeosang,_

_I was your star, once upon a time. Huh. Once upon a time. That’s fitting. Maybe you loving me was just a fairy tale. It felt like one, felt perfect, just like all the stories my mom used to tell me. Maybe that should’ve been a sign. Maybe I should have noticed you were too good to be true as soon as I laid eyes on you at that skatepark. I mean, come on, someone like you genuinely loving someone like me? I should have known. I shouldn’t have deluded myself with fantasies of you. I shouldn’t have let you fulfill them, because I should have known you would drop me to the dirt as soon as you found someone better, all the while keeping my heart tucked away in your pocket._

_I used to be your star, and now...now you treat me like I don’t even exist, like I’m nothing to you, like I never was anything to you, like I don’t even have a name for you to call me by. I used to be your star, Yeosang. Tell me, what happened to that?_

~~_Love,_ ~~

_From,_

_Jongho (or should I give myself a fucking number or something, instead? That’d be more fitting, wouldn’t it?)_

* * *

**section three**

_I still revolve around you, nothing's changed_

_But if there's no name to love_

_Everything's changed_

_Did you really find the Eris?_

_Tell me, what does the moon have that I don't?_

* * *

Yeosang is still as beautiful as he always was, still a shining sun, the brightest star in their solar system, that same gravitational force still keeping Jongho in orbit around him, even if Yeosang doesn’t care to look and see if he’s still there. He is. He’s still there. And every time he tries to break that revolution, that force just pulls him back every time. He hates the way it’s impossible for him to let Yeosang go, hates the way he just can’t look away, can’t ignore him when he sees him across the road fucking around in the skatepark with his friends, can’t ignore the sound of that lovely laugh dipping and bobbing through the air, can’t ignore the way his heart twists when he remembers that he’s not the one drawing that sound out of him anymore.

Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. There was once a time when Jongho revolved around Yeosang, basking in the warmth of Yeosang’s sunshine loving gaze on his skin, because that fixation, that love, was reciprocated, or at least, it had seemed to be. Everything is still the same, Jongho still revolves around Yeosang, remains in orbit around him, but now Yeosang’s eyes are on a different planet, warming a new surface with his sunshine loving gaze instead of Jongho’s rocky ground, and Jongho looks on in a haze of pain that he thinks may never fade, and by God, he fucking _hates_ it.

He wishes there was something he could do about it, but Yeosang’s gravitational pull is too strong for Jongho to let him go.

+++

_Dear Yeosang,_

_I’ve figured out what the story of our love is like._

_You’re the sun, you always have been, and you probably always will be, pulling people into your orbit and giving them just enough warmth with the rays of your “love” so that they think they’re warm, and then you move on to someone new and plunge them into hypothermia again._

_I’m Pluto. I was once a planet to you, I had a name, and you called me by it religiously, like it was scripture, and you kissed me like my lips were holy communion and you couldn’t possibly get enough of it. You told me you loved me again and again like it was the word of God, and I believed you like the most faithful Christian in the solar system._

_He’s Eris. The new planet, the one who took my name and my planetary status away from me. The one who took your love and redirected it, so it wasn’t shining on me anymore, and never would again. (Something happened to the planet Eris alongside Pluto, something that I think might happen to him if your track record is any indication, and if I knew his name, I’d warn him, but I’m sure he wouldn’t believe me anyway. Wooyoung and San both tried to warn me about you, after all, and I didn’t listen to either of them. How naive I was. Would he listen if I tried? I wonder…) Eris came along, and reduced me to nothing but a number…_

_Nothing but a number. That’s what I am to you now. This metaphor is awfully fitting, isn’t it? I’m Pluto. Or, I was Pluto. Now, I’m nothing more than a string of numbers. I’m nothing to you, just the way that Pluto is nothing to the sun now, nothing more than a dwarf planet without a name, nothing more than a string of numbers. And I’d like to know, Yeosang: what does Eris have that Pluto does not? Tell me, what does he have that I don’t?_

~~_Love,_ ~~

_From,_

~~_Jongho_ ~~

_134340_

* * *

**section four**

_Nothing much different from yesterday_

_Same old days, it’s just you’re not here_

* * *

It hurts, you know. When people leave, that is. It hurts. It hurts terribly. The thing about people leaving your life is that when they leave they take things with them. Sometimes they take objects; maybe they never gave back your favorite sweater that you let them borrow that one time, and now it’d be awkward to ask for it back because they’re gone now and they’ve probably forgotten you. Sometimes they take memories; all the happy times you had with them soured and cast in a worse light now, never to be looked at through rose-colored glasses again. Sometimes they take you. Sometimes they leave, and they take you with them. Not in the literal sense, of course, because if they physically took you with them, they wouldn’t be gone, now, would they?

No, they take _you_. They take every little piece, leaving you with new ones that are heartbroken and jagged and there aren’t enough of them and none of them seem to quite fit together properly, so instead of being the pretty picture advertised on the box, you’re a jigsaw puzzle with holes scattered throughout and no proper corners or uniform edges. They take you with them, leaving you so full of nothing that you don’t really know who you are anymore without them.

That’s what Yeosang did, you see. He took all of Jongho’s pieces with him when he turned away, and tossed them into a black hole, never to be seen again. It’s hard to take the too-few jagged pieces Yeosang left him with and mold them into replicas of the old pieces. It’s hard. Too hard, perhaps. Too hard to accomplish at all, maybe; or at least, not yet.

It’s hard to put yourself back together again when people leave, when they’ve taken all the pieces of your puzzle away and you have to rebuild yourself completely, create a whole new person from the ashes. Because, you know, everything is exactly the same as before, except they’re not there anymore; and it hurts to instinctively look to your side when someone says something funny to meet the eyes of someone who isn’t there and laugh with them, and it hurts to see a photo of a cute kitten on your social media feed and instinctively move your thumb to tap that share button and send it to someone who now has you blocked on everything, and it hurts to listen to a song and think of them and remember that you can’t send them a link to it with the attached message: _This reminded me of you_.

It’s hard. It’s hard, and it sucks, and there’s no way around it, really. It’s a process, one that isn’t linear, and never can be. It’s a curve that’s got ups and downs and whatever’s in between, and there will never be a straight line to closure. Jongho wishes there was a way to graph getting over someone in a linear fashion, but he’s discovered that there just isn’t.

+++

_Dear Yeosang,_

_It feels weird still, having you gone. It feels weird reaching over to the bedside table to shut my alarm off without your head on the pillow next to me getting in the way. It feels weird walking to class without holding your hand, having to do that awkward jog to keep up with you cruising along on your skateboard. It feels weird actually being warm standing in that one arcade that always has the air con cranked way too high, because there is no you next to me complaining that you’re cold and taking my jacket._

_It feels weird, because it’s the same old days, the same old routine, just void of you, and it feels off, it feels wrong, and I can’t do anything to fix the empty feeling it gives me, because no matter how hard I try, I can’t get you back._

_Nothing has changed about my routine, nothing has changed about my day-to-day, just that you’re not here anymore…_

_I wish you were…_

~~_Love,_ ~~

_From,_

_134340_

* * *

**section five**

_You erased me, you forgot me_

* * *

  
  


_Dear Yeosang,_

_Just like I thought. It’s a perfect parallel, really. Maybe I manifested it or something because I wrote it down. I’ll have to ask San, he’s into stuff like that._

_You demoted him to a dwarf planet, too. He really is Eris in our pitiful little story. I know his name now: Seonghwa. It’s a shame, really, that you didn’t treat him any better than you treated me, or Wooyoung, or San. Only a week ago, I could have argued that you’d changed, that you’d learned a lesson, that you really loved this time, but you kicked him out of your heart too, just as mercilessly as you did to all those before him._

_I hope you do change. I hope you come to realize that when you tell someone you love them, you need to mean it. You can’t just pull people into orbit around you and then decide one day that you don’t want them anymore and then erase them from your life, that’s not how it works, Yeosang._

~~_Love,_ ~~

_From,_

_134340_

+++

Jongho doesn’t want to believe it. He doesn’t want to come to terms with it, doesn’t want to accept it. He’s gone through the first four stages of grief, and now he’s hesitating before the doorstep of the fifth. Acceptance. Acceptance. The hardest stage of grief to walk through the open door of. Acceptance means acknowledging that they are no longer a part of your life, that they aren’t coming back. Acceptance means letting go, and Jongho isn’t ready to let go.

He’s not sure he could, even if he was ready.

* * *

**section six**

_I’m just a number_

_And a dark Pluto that’s hard for you to remember_

_But still, I’ll be going around you_

* * *

It’s like Yeosang doesn’t even remember him. He looks at Jongho now like he’s a blurry image, a mist that takes the shape of someone he’s vaguely sure he used to know, but eventually his eyebrows even out from their scrunched-up position of tight uncertainty and he gives up on trying to recognize the inklings of features. It feels like a knife to the back, a punch to the stomach, it knocks all the air out of Jongho’s lungs. He really is Pluto, and Yeosang truly is the sun.

It all revolves around Yeosang, he is the true center of the solar system, the sun, the one who gives out his warmth to those lucky enough for a brief period of time before he lets them go and lets them wither and die without even sticking around long enough to watch it happen.

Meanwhile, Jongho is one of those unlucky planets, cursed to revolve around Yeosang forever and ever and ever, even though Yeosang doesn’t even consider him to be a real planet anymore, taking away his name and replacing it with a number, leaving him to orbit in circles eternally, never able to let go of his bright shining sun. He can try and try and try, but he’ll never succeed, and there’s something simultaneously comforting and terrifying about that guarantee of constant failure. At least it’s something that’s constant, something that won’t ever leave the way Yeosang did. Yeosang may be gone, but Jongho’s orbit around him is forever.

+++

_Dear Yeosang,_

_It’s pathetic, isn’t it? Absolutely fucking pitiful. The way I keep looking at you and hoping you’ll maybe acknowledge me in a way that’s not you just staring at me as if you’re trying to remember whether or not we’ve met before. The way I keep hoping there’ll be recognition in your eyes one of these days. It’s only been a year and a half (and I mean, really, that’s a long time for me to still be hung up on you), but it’s only been a year and a half, and you’ve blocked me from your mind completely. It’s like you really have utterly and totally forgotten me. It’s like I was never a part of your life._

_And yet I still stare right back at you, hoping that maybe the pain in my eyes will jog your memory. It won’t. But I can hope, can’t I?_

_I really am nothing more than a number, barely even a person anymore, just a pitiful dwarf planet you struggle to even remember, and yet I still orbit around you like it’s what I was born to do. It’s pathetic, and I wish I knew how to make it stop._

_I wish I could say I don’t love you anymore and have it be the truth. For now, and maybe for a long time to come, that’s nothing but a lie._

_Love,_

_134340_

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it this far, thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed reading this as much as i utterly loved writing it, and i hope you're having a good day/night! don't forget to eat, drink plenty of water, wear a mask, and wash your hands! i love you, and thanks again for reading <3
> 
> \+ abby <3


End file.
